The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (13 page)

In my imagination, the rider, who I did not paint, is getting her grooming tools after a muddy morning ride. A stiff brush to run all over the horse's dusty body. Ointment for any spots the saddle rubbed wrong. A pick to clean the hooves. An apple, maybe? Or a carrot? I wish, not for the first time, that I had learned the horse's name.

“I'm not really a horsey person,” I tell her. “This horse tells me about something else, though. I was doing some country work. Cooped up in Chicago too long, last March, and then there were a few days of warm weather, that false spring you get where you suddenly remember that not being cold is a possibility.”

She nods. “I love and hate those days equally.”

“Me too. I regret them being over even as they're happening, even as I'm rushing outside in a barn jacket and rain boots and breathing wet air.”

She smiles. “I know exactly what you mean.”

And then it hits me. I know why I wanted her to have this painting. Why I liked her instantly, why it's been so easy to chat with her over breakfasts. Why I was so embarrassed when my card was declined. Why she made me think of Renee. “Your mother's gone, isn't she?”

She starts, and looks away from the painting for the first time. “What? How did you know?”

“Mine too. Partly it's the house. You have a lifetime of fine things in here, a lifetime longer than yours. Like the coatrack,” I say, pointing toward the hand-bent wooden coat tree in the foyer. “From a distance, it could be from Restoration Hardware. Only from up close do you see that there are no joints.” Or the antique lace pillows in her bedroom, I think to myself. The Hull vase in the hallway.

“No one has ever commented on that before,” she says.

I shrug. “And partly it's just knowing. When did you lose her?”

“Six years ago. This was her mother's house before her. So it's two lifetimes' worth of stuff, actually.”

I smile sadly. “Mine was in college. She offered to leave me everything at the end, but I didn't want it.”

Colleen nods. “I understand. Taking it would have made it real.”

“Yes. That, exactly. So she sold it to an auction service. Prepaid the rest of my tuition.”

“Oh, wow. What an amazing gift. Better than stuff.”

“Yes.” I turn to her. “But it, uh, didn't exactly motivate my stepbrother to return my calls, as you can tell.”

She gives me another of her gentle smiles. “There are days I'm glad to be an only child.”

I smile back, matching her compassion as best I can. I can only imagine how hard it can be to grieve a mother all on your own. “Your father?” I ask.

“He lives four doors down, all by himself. I'm trying to get him to date. Are you interested in older men?”

I laugh. “He can do better.”

She laughs too. “Well, he's not much into art. Your father?”

“He divorced my mother and remarried a third time when I was still in high school. Lives in Arizona. Didn't even come to the funeral.”

She shakes her head. “Some men walk away so easily,” she says. I think of Colleen's closet. The tiny carefully hung onesies in a row. Did someone walk away from that?

“It's strange,” I say. “I can barely leave even when I'm evicted.”

She gestures around the room and says, “Case in point.”

Relieved to be able to laugh about this, I plop back down on the sofa. “Kick me out at any time.”

“I will, but first, tell me about the painting.” She comes over to the wingback next to me, settles in, and trains her eyes on the stable, the horse, the sky.

“Right.” I remind myself that she hasn't said if she wants it yet. “The painting. March. My mother died in March.” Out of the corner of my eye I see her absentmindedly rub a hand over her cheek, and I imagine the touch she is recalling. A kiss? At the end, my mother was too weak for real hugging, but she never stopped touching us, moving the hair from my face or pulling lint off my brother's shirt. “The day I painted that, I couldn't stay inside anymore. I put everything in the car and went west, past the suburbs, almost to Iowa. As I drove I watched the developments fall away in my rearview mirror, and started taking photos.” I think of that strange, softly lit day. Probably the last time I was artistically inspired, and it was nearly a year ago. “It was the beginning of a series, my first rural one ever. I got so many lovely barns—I love really flat buildings and what could be flatter than a barn?—and then I heard a story about something interesting on the radio and pulled over to listen.”

What
was
that story on the radio? I don't even remember. It proved not to matter at all. “That's when I noticed the stable. I watched a woman in her forties come in from a ride. I watched her dismount, and then show this horse a kind of firm tenderness it understood. She handled the horse so lovingly and spent so, so long cleaning him and putting his tack away. An hour, maybe? I watched the entire thing. It was a strange process, I thought. I'm not really sure what she was up to but she seemed to be doing more than necessary. She was babying the horse. Like…” I stop myself, check Colleen's expression out of the corner of my eye. Her lips are pressed together like she is swallowing something scratchy.

“When I painted this I had a whole story in my head. About a woman living alone with her animals, three hours from the city, living comfortably and joyfully and yet with a kind of wanting I can understand. Like you can be discontented and happy at the same time, somehow? Like such a thing is possible. That's what this picture is about.”

She is silent for a while. Finally, in almost a whisper, she says, “I know about that.”

I quietly stand up and straighten the work over the fireplace, though it wasn't crooked at all. It's just that I want to give Colleen my back for a moment. In case she needs me not to see her. “I didn't sell this painting because it wasn't right for the series. It wasn't right for the series because it was right for your B&B. See?”

“Thank you,” she says. “I love it.”

“I still plan to pay you for the nights I stayed. This is a gift to apologize for the inconvenience I caused.”

“It's so beautiful,” she tells me.

“It needs a frame, I'm afraid.”

“I have a good friend in town who owns a gallery. She'll frame it for me.”

The gallery I saw on the walk to the outfitters. It looked so inviting. I should have gone in, but it would have felt like a betrayal to Mitchell. Gallery people are so possessive. I think of how he'd feel about me giving this work away, and then decide he wouldn't care. He didn't want to sell it himself, after all. He passed on the entire series. Said it wasn't in keeping with my urban aesthetic.

I look at the painting one more time, whisper a good-bye to it in my heart, and let it go. “If it's all right with you,” I tell her, “I'm going to do that paperwork I told you about and get going. I'll leave my brother's number and address so you know how to find me. The check will be in the mail.”

“It's okay,” she says. “Your bill is paid in full. More than in full. I've never been so moved by a piece of art before.”

Wow. “My goodness,” I say. “I don't know what to say. Thank you.”

Colleen dismisses my thanks and looks at her watch. “Actually, it's getting too late to drive all the way to Chicago. Why don't you stay another night, on the house? Tomorrow the roads will be plowed. It will be much safer.”

I pause, silently. I think of last night, driving through all that snow down the winding dark roads of the North Woods. Then I think of Mitchell, with his thousand-dollar suits, unwilling to spot me two hundred dollars in an emergency. Maybe he should have to wait one more night to see me. “Really?” I ask Colleen. “Are you sure?”

“I'm sure. Go back upstairs and unpack. Deal with your divorce—or whatever that's about—in private. I'm taking this over to my friend now so she can be jealous of me and I can get it framed.”

“That's really amazing,” I say, flabbergasted. “Thank you.”

“Strangely enough, I feel I am the one who should be thanking you,” she tells me.

“You're wrong about that, but I'll take it. I'll take whatever help I can get right now.”

She smiles widely at me. “Well, now you've got me.”

 

Seven

 

The next morning, I trot down the stairs of the Minnow Bay Inn feeling incredibly restored. It's utterly illogical, because my best friend's not taking my calls, my boyfriend is “very disappointed” that I may miss his opening, and I am, thanks to a grilled cheese at the diner for dinner, down to my last three dollars. But I must have gotten used to the quiet here because I slept like a baby last night, and I am very much looking forward to another of Colleen's epic breakfast offerings, and I am still feeling touched by the way she responded to my art yesterday. It has made me feel like, at least in this one respect, I can go back home with my head held high. Or maybe I just have a spring in my step because I am clutching a prepaid FedEx envelope with my completed annulment filing inside it, and will soon be putting Minnow Bay and Ben Hutchinson far behind me for good.

But when I get to the dining room I find Colleen sitting on a chaise reading a paper with her feet up, and no breakfast in sight. “Aha!” she says when she sees me. “I was hoping you'd come down soon.” She takes in my still-wet hair and a pretty embroidered tunic I picked out this morning. “Wow, you clean up nicely.”

Sweet woman. “The secret is that spa shower in the room. I'm cleaner than I've been since my baptism. That, and the restorative food. Speaking of which, what's for breakfast?” Wait, what did I just say? “Oh my God, that was so rude. I'm sorry. I cannot believe I just demanded food from you after all you've done. Your cooking is too good; it's made a beast out of me.”

“Don't apologize! It's a B&B. That's a very reasonable question. The answer is, today I am forced-marching you across the street for brunch, my treat, at our wonderful local brew pub, where you can have a Bloody Mary that will change your life, and killer market scrambles, and they will put hollandaise on anything if you ask them to. I hope that's okay by you. It's hard to get myself all amped up to cook a big breakfast for one patron in the dead of winter,” she says. “And, to be honest, I have someone I want you to meet over there. Plus, a Bloody Mary does sound amazing. I love drinking my vegetables.”

“Me too! But who is this mystery someone? It better not be Ben Hutchinson.”

“It's not, I promise,” she says.

“Well then, let me get my handbag.”

At the River Street Brewery, Colleen and I are seated at a high four-top right by the big storefront windows. A warm vent between us and the windows keeps the winter at bay, but there is something about January brunch in Wisconsin that speaks of leaving our scarves on, and we do. Moments after we place our Bloody Mary orders, the door opens with a whoosh and in walks a pretty woman with chin-length black hair and a trim white parka, belted at the waist. She sees Colleen and me and comes straight over.

“There you are!” she cries. This must be our special guest. “Did you tell her yet?”

“Tell me what?” I ask.

“I don't know how you can keep secrets the way you do,” the woman says to Colleen. “I would have blurted it out the minute I laid eyes on her.”

“Blurted out what?” I ask again.

Colleen pats a chair next to her and says to me, “Lily Stewart, meet Jenny Cho, Minnow Bay's own artist-wrangler and gallerist extraordinaire.”

Jenny nudges Colleen. “You forgot town councilwoman and deacon of the church, dummy.”

“Yeah, yeah. Jenny runs ArtWorks, the biggest summer art festival in the North Woods. She consults for major collectors and she's kind of a huge deal—”

“Ignore her,” Jenny says. “She's only sucking up to me because the festival keeps the inn booked solid for the entire month of July.”

“That, and she's my best friend,” says Colleen.

“Oldest friend,” corrects Jenny. “River Street Bloody Marys are my best friend. Did you order me one?”

Just then our server arrives with our drinks. We both ordered bloodys, my “Regular” arrives with celery, three olives, and a perfect hint of spicy heat. Colleen's is “Salad Style” with a veritable pickle plate sticking out of it on skewers. Both come with tiny glasses of beer on the side. “What's this?” I ask.

“That's your beer back,” Jenny says as she helps herself to one of Colleen's dilly beans. “Chris, can I get mine briny?”

Chris shakes his head. “It's vile, is what it is,” he tells her, but leaves to go make whatever vile thing it may be.

I look from my Bloody Mary to my tiny glass of beer in confusion, but decide to let it go. “So, what is it you're going to tell me?” I ask.

“It's about the painting,” Jenny says. “Colleen brought it over to me last night. I plotzed.”

“Good plotz or bad plotz?”

“Bad plotz, for me,” said Colleen. “I can't accept it.”

My face falls.

“It's not what you think,” she says quickly, over my groan.

“I thought you liked it yesterday. Crap. I have no idea how I'm going to pay for my nights at the inn now. My brother called last night and told me that he wasn't allowed to lend me any money. He said Cammie—that's his wife—thinks lending is bad for family relationships.” I seethe at the memory. Suddenly when I'm the one who needs help, there's a policy? “If you ask me, being an embittered prick isn't good for family relationships either, but I didn't say that to him.”

“Maybe you should have,” Jenny says lightly. “Maybe your brother needs to hear another perspective.” I look at her with an arched brow, wondering what she thinks she knows about me, and what she learned from the Minnow Bay Grapevine. “Anyway, you don't need to worry about the money. Like, for a nice long time.”